Windows XP Networking Confusion

[ilikecake]

I am not sure where to put this, but I think it is an OS issue more than a network issue, so here goes:

I have a small network at home which has a few computers running windows, and a NAS device. I have shares on my NAS that I would like access to on my Windows XP desktop, so I used the 'map network drive' command from windows explorer. The catch is that the shares are password protected and I need a username and password to login. The 'map network drive' dialogue has an option to use a different username and password, but it doesn't seem to remember these settings. So, basically I would have a persistent network drive, but I would have to type in the username and password every time I boot my computer. Not the end of the world, but kinda annoying.

To solve this problem, I am trying to setup a login script that automatically mounts the shares with the username and password. However, this is where I ran into difficulty. The command I am using is 'net use' and looks like this:

net use z: \\NAS.IP.Address\share_name /user:NAS\User password:mypassword

However, this is where the confusion part comes in. This command fails, however, if I omit everything after the share_name, the command will work. Furthermore, the z: drive will show up and be accessible. This means that I am able to connect to the share even though I did not enter a password. I have tried this a few times, and it seems to work every time, even if I try right after a reboot (to clear any saved passwords). Is it possible that windows is remembering my password, even though it wouldn't remember it using the original method? Is the 'net use' command connecting using a different protocol which is unsecured on my NAS?

If anyone has any insight about this, please help me out. Also if there is a better way to do what I am trying to do, I would love to hear it.

 

[Demon10000]

Is it the same username and password that you log into windows with?

I believe the sytanx for net use is wrong, though. It should look something like this:

Net Use <drive>: \\<server>\<share> /user:<username> <password>

The difference is in the password parameter. I don't believe you have to add /password: to the front of it, you just type the password.

It looks like there is a /savecred parameter for it, and if you used it once, it might save the credentials for you, but I've never used it before.

 

[ilikecake]

Thanks for the response. Is there a way to clear out all the credentials in XP so I can start over and try to get this to work? I don't need the tightest security around, but if the password protection is not working, I would like to know.